Liqiang Sun

Liqiang Sun

Biography

Dr. Sun received his Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from North Carolina State University in 1997. He was a post-doc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California - San Diego for two years, an associated research scientist and research scientist at IRI of Columbia University for twelve years, and a visiting scholar at FUNCEME and the Brazilian Met Service for seven months prior to joining NCICS.

Dr. Sun’s research activities are focused on regional climate modeling and downscaling, understanding regional climate variability across time scales, improving climate prediction/projection, and climate risk management. He has contributed to the coupling of the Regional Spectral Model, Common Land Model, and Regional Ocean Model System, and developed a tropical version of the NCAR Regional Climate Model. He uses regional models to understand regional climate variability and assess the added values of regional models and has served on the regional spectral modeling committee for the past 11 years.

Dr. Sun has fifteen years experience of real-time climate forecasting and verification. He is actively involved in climate forecast consolidation in Brazil and has pioneered and provided international leadership in climate downscaling prediction research. He developed an operational climate dynamical downscaling forecast system in 2001- the world's first - based on global model predictions made at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and climate downscaling using regional models carried out at Ceara Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (FUNCEME). He has served on the Predictability, Predictions and Applications Interface Panel, the U.S. CLIVAR Program, and the WMO Panel of CCI experts - climate products and prediction services.

Dr. Sun is also involved in interdisciplinary studies of climate risk management. He led the effort to develop a crop yield prediction system and a streamflow prediction system over Northeast Brazil, and contributed to the development of climate information and decision-making tools for the agricultural sector and a water allocation system.

Dr. Sun joined NCICS in May 2012. He is Deputy Science lead for the National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit and has served as an adjunct associate professor at NCSU since 2005.

De Haan, L. L., M. Kanamitsu, F. De Sales, and L. Sun, 2014: An evaluation of the seasonal added value of downscaling over the United States using new verification measures. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 1-11, doi:10.1007/s00704-014-1278-9. Available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1278-9